The Dead Never Really Say Good-bye
by JEGlass
Summary: "The mouth of the whisky bottle missed the rim of the cut crystal glass, effectively pouring golden liquid all over the table until Glinda was able to right herself and actually get her spirits into their desired container. Muttering dark curses under her breath, her mood soured from the day's events, she snatched the glass off the table..."


The mouth of the whisky bottle missed the rim of the cut crystal glass, effectively pouring golden liquid all over the table until Glinda was able to right herself and actually get her spirits into their desired container. Muttering dark curses under her breath, her mood soured from the day's events, she snatched the glass off the table, not bothering to clean up the mess slowly soaking into her papers, and shot back her drink. The burn of the liquor temporarily stole her breath. She coughed to clear her airway, sucking her teeth afterward to be rid of the residue. Whisky wasn't her first drink of choice. Hell, it wasn't even her second or third, but by Oz did it make her head spin while it burned a path to her stomach. Perhaps it wasn't her first drink of choice for socializing, but the Unknown God only knew cheap whisky was her go-to beverage when it came time to getting drunk.

Hitching her hip on the edge of her disheveled desk, Glinda allowed herself a moment to breathe as the liquor did its job and scorched her from the inside out. She accepted the burn and reached for more, her previously shaking hands finding a level of stability the more she drank.

 _Does this burn like water burned you?_ the blonde thought darkly, her mind lingering in the shadowy, dangerous place it had been skirting all afternoon. _Is this what it felt like, Elphie? I doubt it. I bet it was worse._

The high chime of the grandfather clock in the corner made her jump, and jumping made her already inebriated vision blur and spin. Undoubtedly the blonde woman would have fallen over hand she not pin wheeled her arms and grabbed ahold of a nearby chair, steading herself as much as possible. After a moment Glinda was able to recover and focus on the clock hands, her already creased brow furrowing into a deep scowl. Snagging her glass again and clumsily pouring another shot, she raised the delicate crystal high, a sick smile splitting her red painted lips.

"Happy anniversary, Elphaba. Two years dead and I'm still a hopeless wreck."

She downed the shot just like she'd done with the last one, exhaling slowly and trying not to let the unshed tears slip from her blue eyes. Easier said than done. Of course it would smear and run her makeup, stripping away the carefully applied armor the young woman wore on a daily basis, but Glinda was beyond caring about her visage for the day; she was done caring about her unkempt hair, wrinkled blouse, skewed pencil skirt, or overall disheveled appearance. She'd paid her dues, smiled for the people, made the necessary speeches, and kept up appearance. Glinda had paid her dues and deserved her private mourning. Two years wasn't that long at all, but then again it felt like a lifetime. Two years and the anniversary still pained her like a kick in the chest. Two years and she still cried herself to sleep some nights wondering how in Oz she was going to survive without her best friend.

 _You lived without her for so long to begin with,_ a slimy voice whispered in the back of her head. It sounded so much like Madame Morrable Glinda almost choked. _Why does it matter now? Because you thought everything would end happily? That she wouldn't die the martyr you never were? That there wouldn't be a cost in the end? Oh Glinda, you are a fool._

"Shut up!" A sudden furry filled the slender young woman, and she flung her glass across the room where it exploded into thousands of sharp crystals against the wall, leftover whisky trickling down the soft cream wallpaper like runny sap. In one vicious sweep she cleared her messy desk of paper, ink, and pens; the loose pages of her work fluttering and curling across the floor like tree dandruff. Hands braced on the mahogany wood, Glinda struggled to catch her breath, struggled to hold in her sobs, struggled to remain standing. Everything hurt. It always did around this time of year. But what hurt the most, what slowly pushed the knife deeper into her chest and twisted it, was the fact that all of Oz found it necessary to _celebrate._

Glinda could hear them outside her apartment if she focused hard enough. Four stories above the ground did little to diminish the din of fervent revelry. The people made up chants and songs to better celebrate their morbid glee of the death of perhaps the most hated entity in all of Oz. "The witch is dead!" they would chant, "ding-dong the wicked witch is dead!" over and over, all night long, and with each verse sung Glinda felt herself falling deeper into despair. Didn't they know? Hadn't she tried to tell them? Elphaba wasn't an innocent by any stretch of the imagination, but she wasn't a _monster_. The true monster had been exiled from Oz, she'd made sure of it, but then why were people so reluctant to give up their hatred in lieu of actual facts?

 _Because everyone wants something or someone to hate. You must have a devil for men to seek god. You ran the Wizard out and became the peoples' new god. Who else did they have left to turn into the devil?_

God-like. Oh, that was certainly a nice way of spinning it, and it wasn't far from the truth. The people of Oz hung on her every word, leapt to comply with her wishes, listened to her proclamations with bated breath, and followed orders with almost unblinking devotion. Glinda was beloved, cared for, _worshiped_ , and the blonde woman would have been lying had she admitted she didn't find this level of devotion addictive. But a deeper part of herself, the part what remembered Elphie and treasured her memory, hated every second of it. Standing atop a pedestal was a lonely life made all the more difficult with the memories Glinda still harbored of happier, simpler times.

Suddenly feeling far too clear-minded for her own liking, Glinda set about searching for her whisky bottle and found it almost half empty next to one of her ornate chairs, a dark wet stain soaking the carpet. Staggering to her feet, she cast about for something to drink out of, found none, and decided that swilling directly from the bottle would work just as well. She'd taken two more stinging gulps and managed to stagger over to the unlit fireplace before something caught her attention. As inebriated as she was Glinda was still sharp and noticed the figure lingering at the corner of her peripheral vison.

"I was wondering when I'd finally see you," she laughed though there was no mirth to it. "Surely the dead have better thing to do?"

The figure shifted as if it had heard—and why shouldn't it have?—but remained by the window just out of sight. Glinda, taking another pull from her bottle, found she was having trouble maintaining her balance and collapsed into the plush high-backed chair next to her, sprawling unceremoniously and unlady like against the cushions, the top four buttons of her salmon-colored blouse undone and her slate gray pencil skirt hiked up around her thighs.

"Whisky has never been kind to you," a familiar and achingly welcome voice said as the figure moved into the low lamplight. Not for the first time Glinda found it hard to discern reality from feverish fantasy. The green woman looked like her Elphie. She sounded like her, but her Elphie was long dead. This shadow, this…phantom, was just her guilt-ridden mind conjuring up painful ghosts to plague her.

"But it does the trick now doesn't it?" Glinda grinned and wiggled the bottle at the specter as if inviting it to drink alongside her, but her joyless smile quickly faded when the green woman made no move towards her.

"What are you doing, Glinda?" The question wasn't mournful or scornful, simply voiced as intrigue, but the blonde couldn't bring herself to fully look the green woman in the face for long. Her guilt wouldn't allow it.

"Why, I'm celebrating!" she beamed with a forced smile. "Haven't you seen the parades and parties and revelry? Everyone is abuzz! It's been two years since the old Wicked Witch melted to ash! Poof! Gone! Never to plague Oz again with her calumny and lies!"

The phantom didn't return the smile, merely watched Glinda from across the room with sharp brown eyes that held so much gravity it was felt as a physical force. Glinda looked away and took another drink, dragging the back of her hand across her mouth and further smearing her makeup.

"I went to your grave again today, if you can even call it that," she said at length when the silence became too much to bear. "Oz knows I had to fight tooth and nail just to find a place for you in any cemetery. No one wanted to sully their grounds with the remains of a 'monster'," she made clumsy air quotations. "But I found a place and set up a marker. And do you know what? It's been desecrated…again. 'No one mourns the wicked' scrawled over the marble in red paint. 'No lilies for the wicked'. Someone even smashed half the marker with a hammer…"

Glinda shook herself and drank again from her dwindling whisky supply, the burn far less intense now. "I did a cartwheel in your honor, did you see? You always used to joke back at school that I was so uncoordinated I couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time. Well, I proved you wrong, didn't I? One full cartwheel, and I danced on my tiptoes too for good measure."

The green phantom chuckled, and the sound of her laughter squeezed Glinda's throat all the tighter. She suddenly couldn't swallow, the ache in her chest squeezing the air from her lungs. "I remember when talking and walking were difficult for you. If you've graduated to walking and chewing gum I feel I should be congratulating you."

"Why did you have to go?" Glinda hissed in a hoarse whisper, staring hard at the carpet between her feet. "Why did you…why did you _all_ have to leave…"

The phantom shifted, eyes downcast. "I didn't have a choice, Glinda. You know that. Oz would have never accepted the reality of what the Wizard and Morrible were and what they had done while I was still alive."

"So you became a martyr for your cause?" Glinda spat, tearing her gaze away from the novelty of her shoeless feet and glaring at the phantom as if her gaze alone could resurrect the dead. "But you'll forever be the Wicked Witch. What did you achieve? What did your death provide other than heartache for those who loved you?"

"Getting the right person into power," the green woman answered without any hint of pleasure in her voice. "I never wanted to be a martyr. That was always your role. At least that's how you spun it back in school."

Glinda couldn't help but half smile at the remembrance of her time at Shiz University. Those were her golden memories. Times were simpler and happier. Her only care in the world had been her social status and putting up with her impromptu and infuriating roommate. But something changed between them, and Glinda found herself eventually surrounded by the very best, if not so much the very popular. Her friends were kind, genuine, loving, trusting, and they made her academic life just a bit more bearable. But like all things in life, all good things must come to an end, and that end had been a savage split between two best friends. At the time it seemed so important. Fiyero had been the linchpin for a lot of change between Glinda and Elphaba, but the blonde suspected—no, she knew—that her and the green witch's separation was as much about jealousy and petty rivalry than it had been political stance. For years she and Elphaba were opposing enemies, good against evil if the Wizard was to be believed, until fate once again chose to bring them together in strange and painful ways. Though their reconciliation had been genuine if not a little brief, it had only served to thaw the frozen hearts shared by both, allowing the impact of Elphaba's death to hurt that much worse.

"Do you still remember that time when you put ink in my tea after I sabotaged your desk?" Glinda asked a little guiltily, twisting the whisky bottle in her hands as a faint smile, her first genuine one all evening, curled her lips. She didn't know why the memory suddenly popped into her mind, but it filled her with pleasant and welcome warmth. "I had blue teeth for two weeks! I hated you so much!"

"How do you think I felt when you thought I'd look good in your clothes? I don't think I ever felt more displaced than I did that day. Pink really doesn't go that well with green," the phantom grinned back, something akin to happiness sparking in her dark brown eyes. Glinda laughed too, taken by the strikingly hilarious mental image of her best friend scowling and stomping around in one of Glinda's blouses and skirts, a gaudy pink flower pinned in her black hair.

"Or…or when you did that ridiculous dance at the Oz Dust when Fiyero and I…when we…" Like a hammer smashing a glass ornament the happiness was suddenly sucked from her soul, and Glinda felt hot tears well in her eyes and wash down her face. Before she could stop herself a ragged sob tore from her throat. Doubled in half, bottle slipping from her fingers, Glinda buried her face in her hands, sobbing hard.

"I can't do this," she repeated over and over, shoulders shaking and chest heaving. "I can't do this! Why are you here?! Why are you showing yourself to me now? Are you even real? Is it my punishment? Tell me, please." When the green phantom remained silent, face half hidden in the shadows, Glinda found herself lurching to her feet in a rush of savage rage. " _Tell me!_ "

Suddenly all the glass in Glinda's apartment rattled dangerously as if struck by a breath of strong wind, shivering at the touch of her unhinging magic. Sorceress though she was, the blonde wasn't nearly as powerful as most of her peers, but she could firmly hold her own. She'd been trained under Morrible, after all, but her greatest tutor and inspiration had been Elphaba. The rattling grew stronger until the glass covering of an ornate cabinet cracked.

"Nothing I say is going to make you feel any better," the phantom said plainly, unmoved by the display of magic. "You have to let me go if you want the pain to stop. That's the only way to heal. You have to let us all go."

"How can you say that?! We were friends! Best friends, Elphie! I wanted to share my life with you and Fiyero, I wanted us all to stay together, so how can you stand there and suggest that I let the best part of myself, of my life, die with you?!"

"You're arguing with a ghost, Glinda! I'm dead! I have been for two years, and you're doing everything in your power to be just like me!" the phantom shouted, startling the blonde enough to push her back a step. Glinda could see a dark hue rising into the phantom's cheeks as anger turned her eyes to black flint. She threw her arm out to sweep the room. "Is this what you did with your life? Is this how you chose to live it? To honor my memory?"

"Don't you dare discount the pain I feel! Don't you dare, Elphaba! You threw yourself on a sword and left the rest of us here to pick up the pieces. Let me grieve in peace!"

"You have the chance to do things I never would have dreamed of! No, I did dream of them. We both did, but only one of us really had the opportunity to make those dreams a reality, and you choose to sit here and wallow? You accuse me of throwing myself on a sword, but what are you doing right now, hmm? Is this any different?"

Glinda's face turned stony. For a moment the living and the dead stared one another down, neither willing to give any ground in the argument. The blonde should have known better. Even in death Elphaba was a formidable opponent when it came to arguments. Many a time the two had stormed away from each other with hurt feelings or worse before the green woman's time with the Animal revolution and her eventual death at the hands of an interloper in Oz.

Eventually, however, Glinda seemed to reach some unspoken conclusion and staggered over to her desk. She'd long ago abandoned her heels, retaining some semblance of wit to recognize the hazards elevated shoes and booze could create when combined. Still, there was enough whisky in her system to make even a sailor wobble, and she fared little better. For a moment she fumbled with the latch on the upper-most drawer, cursing and muttering, but managed to wrench it open and grabbed what was inside. Her fingers closed around the cold perforated handle of the pistol she was inclined to keep on hand in case of home invasions. It was purely precautionary, no one would dare step foot in her apartment or lay a hand on her, but Glinda's nervous assistant had worn her down over time. Oz was reshaping itself after the Wizard's brisk and unannounced departure, and the tides of inevitable revolution were forever ebbing and flowing. With shaking hands the blonde set the weapon on the desk, causing the phantom to pause, eyes widening. The slender woman caught the faintest scent of winter pine in the air accompanied by a metallic tang that Glinda vaguely recognized as building magic…only it wasn't her own.

"Glinda…"

"I've tried to be the leader Oz needs me to be, but I can't do it. I have since the night you died….since the night Fiyero died. I've tried to pick up the pieces." She paused and attempted to steady herself, vision blurring. "I could do it, you know," Glinda hissed, shoulders bunching as she hunched over the gleaming metal weapon, blue eyes glittering with fresh tears in the lamplight. "I _want_ to do it.

"No," the phantom said coolly as she took a step closer, "you don't. This isn't you, Glinda. This is the whisky talking."

"Why didn't you take me with you?" she hiccupped, tears dripping off the tip of her nose and spattering against the desk. Slowly, because the cold metal was heavier than it looked, Glinda lifted the pistol and pressed the barrel against her temple, knuckles turning white as she gripped the handle. In the back of her mind she heard her mother's words echoing like a chime. _The people who seem the happiest are oftentimes the loneliest. The people who smile and laugh the most are the truly damaged ones because they are forced to hide scars behind painted smiles._

For the first time that evening the blonde saw a flash of raw emotion flicker across the phantom's green visage. The ghost of her only true best friend raised her hands in a gesture of forestallment, fear leaching the emerald green hue from her cheeks. Could ghosts feel fear? Glinda hadn't noticed it before, but the phantom was wearing the same outfit the living Elphaba had melted in with a few small variations. The black dress was still high in the collar and long in the sleeves, but the material seemed almost new. Did ghosts get new clothing in the afterlife? Glinda had always believed passing onto whatever lay beyond the realm of the living left you changed, but the phantom looked as she had two years ago. Did that mean Elphaba hadn't found peace in death?

"I gave you all the opportunity to follow me, but fate had others plans," the phantom was saying, edging closer with each words spoken. "Think, Glinda! For once stop pretending to be the pawn and start thinking like the queen. If you had gone with me what would have happened? The Upland name would have been just as sullies as Thropp. You wouldn't have ended up a martyr but rather a casualty, and nothing in Oz would have changed for the better. I gave you every opportunity to follow me that day in the Wizard's castle, and you for once followed your head rather than your heart. You stayed away and acted at the right moment. You ousted the Wizard. You jailed Morrible. You're working on cleaning up Oz. You _can_ do this because you already _have_."

"Don't you understand!?" Glinda bellowed, her dead friend's words falling on deaf ears. "I can't do this anymore! I can't be what they want me to be! I want to go home; I want things to be the way they were; I want you and Fiyero back in my life! I want my mother and father. I want my Ama. I want to _have_ a life and not some falsified shell!"

"You have a life. Look around you," the ghost implored, nearly half way around the desk at this point. Glinda attempted to back away but found herself trapped by both her oversized chair and the breath-catching severity of Elphaba's brown eyes boring into hers. "You get to do it better than all of us. You get to be the hero Oz needs. You are Glinda the Good. You come and go by bubble, and you will change the world for the better, just like you changed me."

"I miss you so much," the blonde finally choked and felt her knees buckle. There was a rush of movement before she hit the ground. Suddenly, strong arms were bearing her weight, or perhaps she was imagining the whole thing. The whisky was rapidly working through her system, eroding the lines between reality and what could very easily be just a fever dream. Glinda felt the brush of cold fingers against her wrist but didn't have to wherewithal to fully comprehend it. Slowly, carefully, Elphaba untangled her fingers from around the pistol's grip, setting the weapon on the desk.

"H-how?" Glinda blinked, blue eyes as wide as saucers as she looked into the face of her best friend, into a face she'd seen only a handful of times but never had it seemed so _real_. Every line and crease, every brown hair and eyelash stood out against emerald green skin that looked so real she could almost touch it. In fact, she did touch it, trembling fingers alighting on the Elphaba's jaw.

"Only for tonight," Elphaba said with a small smile, leaning into Glinda's touch.

"But…but I can—"

"The dead don't truly leave us, Glinda, not really. We're always here just out of sight. Always watching. Always listening. That's all you need to know."

"Please don't leave me again," Glinda suddenly cried, gripping onto Elphaba's surprisingly sturdy dress fabric and clinging to it like a lifeline.

"I've never left you," she soothed. "I've always been by your side."

The two sat on the floor together for an undetermined period of time, the dead comforting the living. Neither said much, simply leaning on the other and focusing on breathing. Eventually Glinda began to succumb to the booze, her head sagging against her chest, blonde curls obscuring her face. Darkness began to close in around her and she suddenly felt as if she were floating, the rough fabric of her visitor's dress replaced with the soft fabric of her bed linins brushing the backs of her arms. Her head was cushioned by an equally plush pillow, but the motion was enough to jar her somewhat awake with a less than delicate snort.

"Elphie?" she called, blearily looking around.

"I'm here," a voice replied from the shadows, and Glinda felt a gentle hand, cold but undeniably corporeal, brush a few stray strands of hair away from her face. "Sleep. Dream. You're going to have one hell of a hang-over in the morning."

"You'll…you'll be here…r-right?"

"I'll always be watching," her friend replied, and this time it was a pair of warm lips pressed against her forehead. Glinda sighed and allowed herself to relax back into her pillows, pulled into sleep by a mix of exhaustion and heavy drinking.

Had she been awake she would have watched the ghost make her exit, though it was curious a specter chose to climb out the window rather than shimmer out of existence. It was even more curious that said specter grabbed a well-worn broom from where it had been hidden behind a long drape and used the magic embedded in the weathered wood to defy gravity and float down to the grounds below Glinda's apartment.

Coming to a standstill in the shadow of a large birch tree, Elphaba drew her hood over her head and activated the glamor woven into the material. In a flash she no longer possessed green skin or any striking details that would mark her as Oz's most hated villain but rather an unobtrusive, common-looking, middle-aged Glinkin woman. Of course the glamor would only work for a time, all spells had their limits, but it would suffice until she left the city limits.


End file.
